Tristran's dread
by Ysolde
Summary: Tristran is levelheaded. Tristran is the coolest. Tristran does not know fear. Except...? Complete with crash course in Danish.
1. Tristran's dread

_**Usual disclaimers apply. No one who truly loves Tristran would ever wish to own him anyway.**_

_**This rant of a story should be taken for what it is : the stuff that happens when my brain is bored.**_

_**I at some point wanted to write Tristran's lines with the font of Discworld's DEATH (since I firmly believe it is appropriate in his case) – but it does not come across in a proper way when uploaded (it just becomes HUGE capital letters) – so you'll all have to imagine that part. **_

_**Here we go. Ahemm... :**_

* * *

"AAAAAA-AAAA-AAAAAAGGGGGHHH!!!"

The sound ended as a sort of whimpering croak. It was the sound of a man wracked with horror. Not only horror, but the most excruciating dread, comparable, possbily, to the prospect of burning alive after being hit by one of the tar-bombs of the Woad.

There was a panicked shuffling in the dark, like someone battling a blanket. It was followed by the more hushed sounds of clothing coming on in a hurry. Then the sound skittered across the floor of the room, momentarily rammed into the door, which was opened, and in the slightly less dark darkness from outside, the shilouette of the escaping could be made out. It was a slender shilouette, male, not at all unpleasant. It was clearly very distraught.

It fled out in the night.

Somewhere within the darkness of the room, another voice concisely expressed its disappointment:

"Drat. Missed again."

_**ttt**_

The next day they couldn't find Tristran.

Bors had come to wake him up and found the scouts door wide open and his room containing no trace of himself.

He started searching around, enlisting the help of Dagonet, Gawain and Galahad in the process.

At Bors' suggestion, they first searched in the tavern. Tristran wasn't there, but Vanora was, and she had beer. They searched on there for quite a while. Just to be on the safe side.

Then, they searched in the training grounds. Amazingly, he wasn't there either.

They searched in the stables, by his horse, who was not gone. No dice.

Finally, Dagonet noticed the shape of Hawk, circling over a certain spot at the edge of the forest on the Woad-side of the wall, crying her mournful cries.

The Woads were not on the warpath at the moment, they knew, and not this close to the wall, as Tristran himself had been able to assess very recently, after scouting out the area in question.

Still, venturing north of the wall was always dangerous.

They could not leave a possibly hurt friend in enemy territory though. Hawks cries seemed to persistently come from the same spot, so they went there.

They found themselves under a tall – _very _tall – tree. Of the kind where the branching starts impossibly high.

Perched as far up the tree as possible, and looking quite obviously as had he seen a demon – or an army of them - sat Tristran, bow in hand.

They had no idea how he had gotten up there. They did not think it chance only, though, that this certain tree had been picked. It was an apple.

He jerked his head warily towards them when they came, hazel eyes staring at them wildly, not even seeming to notice all the lovely apples as they tantalizingly tried to get the attention of this, their usually most fervent of lovers. He regarded his comrades below with paranoid suspicion. Then he took to ignoring them all, as if hoping that if he persisted they would eventually evaporate.

Bors, being the one least capable of too much suspense, tried first :

"Wot ye doing up there, hawkboy?"

He was met by sulky silence. He tried again.

"I _said," _and he used the tone usually reserved for the twins back home, _"Wot are ye doing?"_

Still no answer. The scout shifted uneasily on his branch, as if trying to turn his back to the unwanted company, the angle of the branching not quite allowing this.

Finally, Bors lost patience. "I ASKED WHAT THE BLOODY 'ELL ARE YE DOING UP THAT BLASTED TREE, YE FRIGGIN BIRDBRAIN?!?"

The husky, low growl of the scout was heard for the first time.

"Go away."

He sat there, gazing out between the branches, not meeting their eyes, an expression of suffering, of utmost weltschmerz, on his sharp, delicate features.

"Tristran," Gawain tried. "Come down."

"No."

The knights on the ground briefly looked around amongst themselves. They saw worry in each others faces. Something was most definitely amiss here.

There were things to do at the fort though, and noon was already approaching, what with all the searching they had done at the tavern. After a couple more unsuccesful attempts to get him to speak and/or come down, they decided anonimously to take turns guarding the tree during the day, while things that needed doing got done.

"We might as well get hold of Lancelot and make him help out as well," Gawain suggested sensibly.

To their astonishment, this suggestion was met by a desperate sound of dread from above.

They stared up at the perched scout. His beautiful eyes were staring into thin air now, as if experiencing again a nightmarish vision only visible to him. He was clearly horrified. This, in itself, was worrying enough. Usually there was not enough blood and gore on the planet for Tristran.

"Keep him away from me!"

"Huh?!" As always, the reaction of Bors defied the label of eloquence. They all gawked incredulously up the tree.

Gawain was the one staying most levelheaded. "Who do you mean - Lancelot?" he asked.

The scout seemed to jump skittishly on his branch at the mention of that name.

"_Keep that disgusting poodle-hair and his filthy friends__** away**__ from me!__"_

They balked at that. Surely, it was known that Tristran had never considered Lancelots flashy look-at-me routine to be much worth his attention, while Lancelot for his part seemed eternally petulant that he _just wasn't the coolest fighter around!_

But poodle-haired? They had never noticed that.

"I'll pick slaughtering at the hands of the Woad any day!" Tristran hissed belligerently.

"Listen," once again, the common-sense voice of Gawain was the one to rise to the challenge.

"As you thus point out, we are, technically, in woad territory. Now we might be able to see the Wall from here, but if you are going to sit up there all day, with no protection but your bow and a not-eternal supply of arrows, we, as your mates, won't feel good about abandoning you. And you might think Lancelot has poodle hairdo," Gawain continued, a musing expression in his face betraying that he might not have thought of it before, but you know, actually Tristran was right, "But he is as good as any of us when it comes to using his swords..."

_THUG!_ An arrow had imbedded itself firmly in a tree, half an inch before the nose of the leonine knight. At least, they thought, Tristran had a point there. As long as he had his bow, he was very very far from defenseless.

"HEY!" Gawain glared up the tree accusingly. But the smoldering eyes of the scout showed no remorse.

"Han skal edder mame holde sit sværd langt væk fra mig, han skal!"

"..."

The silence was deep. The silence was vast. The silence was totally and utterly dumbfounded.

"Wut?!" Bors managed, at last. The others just gaped. Eventually, Galahad spoke up.

"You know... I'm not certain, but you know, I _think _that sounded a bit like when I heard Cerdic grounding his kid with the freaky beard for the fifth time the other day." And he bravely approached the stem of the tree, looking up. "Why are you speaking saxon, Tris?" he inquired enthusiasticly.

A huff of insult was the only answer. Okay, not saxon. At least not the kind of saxon Cerdic spoke, though the relation seemed to be there.

They were at a loss. Galahad decided to try something else. He got hold of one of his bags and started rummaging through it, throwing things behind him as he went. There was a snow globe, some rope, an old head of cabbage, and even a beautifully carved knife which everyone was pretty certain that Tristran had recently been searching for. Galahad stashed it away quickly, before finally holding up a tattered book, a triumphant grin on his face. 'Danish/English Phrasebook' it read on the cover. Apparently, Galahad was always prepared. "I think we can use this," he said, and then leafed through it searching, before putting his finger down on one of the pages.

"Um... Galahad..." Dagonet looked a bit sceptical. "Wouldn't a Danish/Sarmatian, or even Danish/Latin phrasebook be more appropriate in this case?"

Galahad studiously ignored him. He looked up the tree again.

"Could you just repeat what you said last?"

An exasperated sigh. Then in a patronizing tone from above : "Jeg _sagde_, han skal edder mame holde sit sværd langt væk fra mig, ellers smadrer jeg ham kraftedeme."The threat was unmistakable.

Galahad was listening intently, leafing through the book, mumbling to himself. Then some understanding seemed to dawn upon him. He looked a bit more worried.

"First off," he said to the others, "It _is _Danish. And you all know what that means."

They nodded at him gravely. Lapse of Character. They had not seen it yet, except in the case of Guinevere, who, it was felt, always just played herself anyway, so it couldn't really count as a Lapse. However, they knew that such a thing could happen if a knight was put under such pressure that it started to overload his mental capacity.

That worried them even more, because they knew of Tristrans usual stress-limit. It was not exactly low. Truth be told, no one had ever really managed to hit it yet. Not even Cerdic, even though he had been cheating.

Galahad, however, had reached a translation of sorts.

"I belive he is saying," the young and unbearably fresh knight conceded, "something along the lines of _'I __**said**__, he is bloody well going to keep his sword the hell away from me, or I'll smash him utterly, see if I don't.'_"

He looked up the tree again, eyes squinting with confusion. "What do you mean, keep his sword away? Lancelot hasn't tried to attack you has he?!"

A tortured groan in response.

Gawain sighed drearily, evidently fed up now. "Well, it isn't exactly as if you can't beat the crap out of him any time you want, is it? Now, come down from that oversized piece of fauna and behave normally!" (It's _'flora' _Dagonet muttered, but no one was listening.)

The scout stared down at him icily. "Fint. Det gør jeg så, i samme øjeblik som _du_ får en idé om hvorfor Galahad altid skal vade rundt i nærheden af dig i det der korte læderskørt" The tone was beyond dry.

Galahad was leafing through his book like mad.

"He is saying : Fine, he shall, the very moment it dawns upon Gawain why I am always hanging out near him in that short leathersk... HEY!? HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT?!" And Galahad stared up at Tristran furiously, while all color seemed to drain off his best friend's face.

Gawain never knew he could climb trees. Furthermore, he never knew he could climb trees where the lowest branches were that high, and at such speed. It wasn't until 15 seconds later, when he found himself desperately clinging to the stem of the apple, on the other side from where Tristran sat, that he suddenly discovered.

He looked wildly to the scout, receiving, from the small curl at the others mouth, evidence of the slightest hint of smug amusement. It was the first remotely positive emotion to grace Tristrans tattooed features that day.

The three remaining knights looked up at the now doubled number of tenants in the tree.

Galahad looked very flustered, busily chattering things like 'I can explain' and 'It is not what it looks like' to thin air, being utterly ignored at that point by his comrades. Bors just looked like he was starting to get a severe headache.

"GAWAIN!" He finally bellowed. "COME DOWN, THIS INSTANT!"

"Like hell!" was all the answer he got. Then Bors gave up. He sat down and started massaging his temples, eyes shut in agony.

That left Dagonet in charge. He quickly surveyed the misery of the scene before expressing his verdict :

"I'm going to fetch Arthur."

He did.

Arthur came. He approached the unhappy tree with a look of utter disbelief.

Meanwhile, Bors had managed to calm down Gawain a bit, convincing him that there would be no harm in leaving the tree, as Galahad wasn't a very big guy. Gawain was now ready to come down. He had, however, no idea how he would manage this, but that problem would have to be solved later. Arthur looked up at his scout.

"Tristran," he said, "as your commander, I am _ordering _you to tell us what in the name of all good and holy is going on."

Tristran scowled at him.

"You know," Dagonet injected carefully, "I do not think our main concern is just getting our man to come down from the tree. I think," The usually silent knight surmised, "That Lancelots safety, once we get him down, ought to be the top priority." Dagonet was quite intelligent. This was why he so rarely bothered to speak up. There just seemed to be a sore need for it now.

Arthur furrowed his brow, then glared up at Tristran again.

"You heard me. Explanation, please._ In English, _thank you very much," He added, after the first few words had left Tristrans mouth. At the mention of English, Dagonet opened his mouth to say something, then seemed to think better of it, and shut it again.

The scout gruffly ignored Arthur for a space. Then he talked again. "Not while they are here."

He gestured to the other men around the tree, evidently refusing any more communication until they had all been removed out of earshot.

Arthur sighed. _And this had been such a good day..._

They managed to get Gawain down with the help of a rope. As they worked on it, Tristran evidently felt a bit threatened, and, nimbly as a cat, climbed a few metres higher.

The bigger cat, Gawain with the lion-coif, fell the last couple of metres. He did not hurt himself too badly, but as soon as he was down he started advancing threateningly on Galahad, leaving Bors and Dagonet no choice but having to drag him off. Galahad stood for a while, looking a bit lost. Then he handed the phrasebook to Arthur, nervously giggling that he might need it, and made himself scarce.

Arthur looked at his scout expectantly, arms crossed and an impatient finger tap-tap-tapping on the other upper arm. Tristran looked seriously uncomfortable, his face the palest shade of green.

"Spit it out." Arthur was tired of waiting.

Tristran looked at him miserably.

Then he finally spilled the beans. He told Arthur about Lancelot and the evil, evil womenfolk aquaintances of the same Lancelot. And he told of their evil evil ideas, which they termed 'slash', and in which they had countless times attempted to force his participation.

_**ttt**_

They saw Arthur come running across the field, trying in horror to cover himself from the rain of arrows hitting the ground left and right of him. They knew that if Tristran had _really _wanted to hurt him, their commander would not even have seen the edge of the forest. Still, the effect was undeniable. Arthur zig-zagged his way towards them like a bunny, finally turning as he reached his men, and bellowing back with all his might : "FOR THE SAKE OF CHRIST ALMIGHTY, STOP IT!"

A hoarse croaking could be heard back from the trees. "Giv mig et solidt tæppebanker reb og bind dig selv nøgen til en stol, så skal jeg fandeme gi' dig 'homoerotisk' dit perverse svin!!!"

Tristran usually did not shout, and his voice clearly was out of practice. However, they could hear him, and Arthur still had the phrasebook. He searched it frantically, before arching his eyebrows at the result he reached.

"Well, wot's he saying?!" Bors asked impatiently.

Arthur repeated what Tristran had been saying with utmost calm.

"Ahem..._ 'give me a good carpet beater rope and tie yourself naked to a chair, and I'll bloody well show you 'homoerotic' you sick pervert'_. "

He closed the phrasebook with a resounding snap and looked around at his knights, then shrugged helplessly.

"I just told him that maybe he could try and be a bit openminded and maybe if he explored his homoer... erm, if he explored that side of him, he might find that he liked it..."

They all winced at his words. Okay, evidently not then.

"Ahem..." Arthur fidgeted around uncomfortably before proceeding. "Well anyway. He says that Lancelot and someone called 'fangirls' have tried to... abduct him several times, and that as long as there is breath left in his body, they will never, ever succeed in it."

They all looked horrorstricken at their commander, before looking back towards the woods and the tree, now with pity in their hearts. Arthur regarded them, relieved that he had not used the scouts exact words. It had been something along the lines of 'they will have to defile my cold, dead corpse'.

It was then that Lancelot, finally, showed up, colgate smile in place, black curls styled to provoke everyones envy at any dog exhibition in Britain and beyond.

"Hey, what's going on?" He beamed. "Where has everyone been all morning?" And he wiggled his eyebrows in the manner which he always evidently thought was extremely sexy.

They turned as one and looked at him blankly.

"What?...What??"

He looked around from one to the other, not understanding what the fuss was about. Then he seemed to decide he wasn't interested anyway. He turned to go back inside the fort, then paused on his way.

"Oh by the way," he said. "If you see that aloof hawkbrain Tristran, will you tell him that I'd really like to meet him at the training grounds for a sparring today? Hey?... HEY...!"

It was then that Bors had lost his wits and grabbed Lancelot around the neck, lifting the knight squirming off the ground. Lancelots legs futilely bicycled around thin air.

The others, including Arthur, grouped around the two of them, Galahad being the only one seeming slightly hesitant, but grateful the heat had been taken off him.

Everyone else agreed.

There were some things you just didn't do to your fellow human beings.

* * *

_**Authors note :**_

_**This little piece was written in frustration, after discovering the apparently countless slash-fics devoted to the Tristran/Lancelot combo. I guess I am always funniest if I'm frustrated.**_

_**While I have no beef whatsoever with the concept of homosexuality, I do feel that : A) slash is an involuntarily comic genre, and B) Lancelot, well, **__**just isn't worthy!**__** (Sorry Lance fangirls – it's just the way I feel I am affraid). **_


	2. The Curse Gets Worse

"Enough!!"

This time, the voice woke them all. Galahad even gave a short outrcy and fell down from his boarding school bunk bed, got entangled with his blanket and woke up Gawain, sleeping in the lower bunk.

"Whu...?" GONK, and Gawain momentarily fell asleep again, while the youngest cataphract of fort Camlann finally got hold of the blanket, fixating it in an effective strangling position between both hands.

Outside, one of their comrades had had... well, enough.

He was angry. No, more than angry, he was furious. No, not even that, he was... whatever it is that an ancient archetype becomes when he is first having his cycle taped haphazardly onto a legend of some King, then some thousand years later is forced to participate in a movie rendition of said King's legend, which can, at best, be said to be mediocre. But even that was okay, because the guy they had hired as interpreter of who he was, had been above average, in fact so great he had decided to keep these appearances. They were the spitting image of him anyway.

So he could deal even with that.

As for the teenage-football-highschool-hunk-and-his-cheerleader-girlfriend rendition of his own legend, he had only heard of it. Apparently, it had been so far away from anything that had anything to do with him that, well, he hadn't even noticed it. So it just didn't count.

However, _this_... this was enough. He paced the lenght of the hall, then turned around. Dagonet came up behind him then and poked him on the shoulder to announce his presence.

"EEEEEEEH!" and he jumped several metres into thin air, spun around and put a knife to the throat of the larger man in front of him. It was a ridiculously sharp knife. They all knew because he was always sharpening it. Dagonet thought, again, about commenting on the obvious phallic symbolism of all the knife-sharpening, but now didn't seem a wise moment to go into that.

"Um...Tr.."

"DON'T...TOUCH...ME...!" And the paranoia was evident, once more, in the eyes of the scout, as he flailed the knife at Dagonet with one hand, the other desperately brushing at the place that had been touched.

Dagonet felt tired. He knew how this would end. He would have to sort it all out, again, and he particularly hated when it was Tristran he had to sort out, because at these occasions this meant that he was the only relatively sane and reliable person around, at least until Gawain woke up.

He didn't blame Tristran. No one could deny that he had been under significant pressure lately. Much more than Dag had himself.

"_I didn't do it! It wasn't me! I didn't do anything!" _and Lancelot came stumbling out of his door, eyes wide and innocent, hands above his head, the impression slightly improved due to the fact that he had two swollen black eyes and some rather significant bruises scattered all over his persona.

Dagonet threw him a look.

Then he threw another look.

"...nice garters," he remarked.

Lancelot stopped mid-protest and looked like he remembered something vaguely unpleasant.

Then he hastily withdrew, which was fortunate, because the sight of him seemed to have set off a sort of chain reaction in the wreck of a man next to Dagonet.

Tristran was mumbling incoherently and looking psychoticly from his knife, to Lancelot, back at his knife in a way which did not, Dagonet decided, help matters. This was why, when Tristran started advancing the direction of Lancelot's room, knife aloft and mirrored in his much-too-large pupils, Dagonet deemed it prudent to grab hold of his collar and lift him up.

There was an iron hook protruding from the wall, on which torches were usually fastened. Dagonet placed the squirming and hissing bundle-o'-joy on the hook, ignoring the quite vicious clawmarks he got up and down his lower arm in the process.

Then he stepped back and looked at his associate, with a sort of despodent patience.

'Tris..."

"RRRRGH..." Tristran argued.

"Tristran..."

"HRRRGRGH..."

"Drwst, son of Tallwch, regain your dignity! This instant."

Tristran stopped and hung, limply and miserably, from his hook. As for the dignity, it was still perhaps a bit on the tattered side. He was on the verge of tears, it seemed.

He hung.

Meanwhile, the others had risen, awoken by the commotion, and all came out, rubbing the sleep from their eyes.

"Whuz all the fuss about?" Bors asked. "Are we taking back the Island?"

"Are we still talking English?" Dagonet retorted, and Bors fell into a deep pondering silence before answering "Uhmm... I dunno... is London cockney a kind of Eng..."

"_It was rhetorical!_ No, we are _not_ taking back the Island, obviously, hence the anglo-saxon vocabulary."

And Dagonet gestured in the direction of the ragged stork-like thing on the wall. By now Gawain, as the last newcomer, had joined the group, which meant that Lancelot was the only one staying in so far. Gawain's left temple seemed to have started sprouting a horn.

"Er..?" Gawain asked intelligently. Then he looked up at the shilouette of a bird perching on one of the girders above Tristran's cool-off-hook. In the darkness, she almost looked like a giant raven.

"Hey you," he called up at the bird. "Say 'nevermore'."

"Fuck you," said Hawk.

Gawain shrugged and shook his head a bit again, trying to clear it up. Then he spotted Dagonet, and the expression of same, and, quickly surveying the scene again, realised that his assistance was needed.

"Right," he started. "Why is Tristran hanging from a hook?"

"To not kill Lancelot," was Dagonet's succinct summary.

"Aw MAN... the french lounge lizard hasn't tried again, has he? I mean, after the roughing up he received..."

"No, he hasn't done anything," said Dagonet. Then, after a pause, during which a strange mix of disturbance and amusement crossed his face, he continued, "But he's got some very becoming garters."

The silence stretched on for some time after that. Then, someone asked the question :

"Where is Arthur?"

At that Tristran screamed and started wriggling and struggling again, babbling away in the usual absurd Scandinavian tongue, and they all looked at each other and did not ask for further explanation. None was necessary. They knew, with dread, why.

However, the question remained. Where was their Commander? Had he, too, been violated, or participated willingly? And_ who were the real culprits?_

Some internal discussion broke out at this point. Dagonet, being the only one not saying anything, stood in the midst of it and furrowed his brow. Then he lifted his index finger.

The others kept at it.

He waited.

The others kept at it.

He waited.

The others kept at it.

He waited.

The others kept at it.

"CUT IT OUT!!"

The others cut it out.

He moved his index finger then, and pointed up at Hawk, still perched on her place above the limp form of her master, from whom all fighting spirit seemed to have suddenly gone. He just hung, eyes closed as if trying to shut out painful visions, tortured mumbling every now and again erupting from his thin lips.

"Hawk," Dagonet observed, "you can talk."

"Well, duh." said Hawk.

"Tristran..?" Dagonet felt it would be smartest to contact Tristran, once more, before getting involved too deep in discussions with his hawk. "Tristran... hello, Tristran, are you there?" and he reached out and slapped the scout gently on one lean chin.

"'L...lovebites'..._lovebites..._" Tristran whimpered.

Dagonet tried to keep calm, though his heart wept for his friend and his hands screamed for vengeance. But there was no vengeance to be had before they knew where their Commander was, if he was still sane, and who the true culprits were.

_**ttt**_

On the suggestion of Gawain, who felt that he really needed something to wake up properly, they headed for the mess. It was starting to dawn anyway, and Vanora would most certainly be up and about, preparing breakfast, and maybe, said Bors, there would be porridge.

It turned out Vanora was up. There was porridge.

Dagonet, who had thrown the remains of Tristran over his shoulder, came in last. Overhead flew Hawk, settling on a girder below the ceiling above the bench where Dagonet gingerly put his exhausted comrade to rest. The rest of them settled along the table, and Bors yelled for Vanora to bring over the goods.

He was rewarded with a flying bowl of steaming hot porridge, crossing the room in an altogether very impressive parabola to hit him directly in face. The ensuing bellowing and hollering, as well as the scuffling to get the searing contents off him, kept the company occupied, while Vanora let the rest of the pot boil to a finish.

Post-porridge, the visage of Bors was even more lobster-coloured than normally, an effect which, it was agreed, was not altogether negative.

"Right," said Hawk, when everyone had their bowl of steaming yumminess standing front of them. "I, for the purposes of the rest of this story, will serve as the mouthpiece of the Author."

All heads at the table turned to goggle at the bird. Hawk shuffled sideways on her girder for a moment, ruffling her feathers a bit self-consciously before continuing. She might have cleared her throat, but that would just have been ridiculous for a bird.

"The 'Author'..." Gawain said warily. "No offense, but I thought she would be inside that hot Irish redhead Tristran is always so diligently trying to knock up."

"Who, Vanora?" Galahad asked incredulously. Another short scuffle ensued to keep Bors in place, during which Gawain gestured frustratedly. "No no, the other one. Ysola-whatchamacallit. Izzy. You know. _Izzy!"_ And he tried to mold the features of said Izzy in thin air, an undertaking which seemed to result in something very curvy and almost succulent.

Hawk glared icily at Gawain, who shut up promptly and suddenly developed a keen interest in his porridge.

"As you have all seen," said Hawk, with a final penetrating gaze on the reverently bowed head of the blonde knight, "things are out of hand here."

Grunts of general agreement met this statement, garnered with the slightly less discreet sounds of Galahad joyously gobbling up his porridge. Hawk studiously ignored the distraction.

"It is therefore with regret that I call this meeting, during which we will... yes?"

Dagonet had reached up his hand.

"Not to be a pain in the tailfeathers, lady, but where is Arthur? I mean, here we sit with one comrade in a state, and we don't even know where our commander is..."

"I'll get to that in a moment," Hawk snapped.

At this comment Galahad straightened with a start from his tryst with the porridgebowl, staring alarmed up at the bird.

"Hey, guys...!" he gasped. "Hawk _talks!"_

The reward for this astute observation fell promptly, in the form of a tired slap upside the head from Bors' mighty right hand.

There was an awkward silence. Hawk shuffled her wings again, and this time something which might have been a throat clearing, escaped the beak of the big bird.

The result was something along the lines of 'whuuuirg'. They all looked worried at her.

"Right. Now that _everyone _has caught on, could we please GET ON WITH IT?!" the bird hissed, neckplumage bristling with hitherto unknown vigor. Somewhere from behind her serving counter, Vanora threw Hawk a sympathetic look.

Hawk briefly returned the favor, and the two females shared a nonverbal moment of common wonder at the species of manhood, its capacity to continuously surprise, and its general utter ineptitude.

The species of manhood themselves spent the same moment gawking alternately at bird and human woman with confusion painted in their faces, partially excepting Dagonet, who had learnt to know better, and fully excepting Tristran, who was still out cold, possibly wandering, alone and lost, along some nightmarish path. When Hawk's eye landed on her human, a small hissing sigh of sudden despair escaped her. Then, straightening her small body, she turned her attention again towards those in the waking world.

"Do you _understand _the graveness of this situation?!" she thundered, and all knights present (and awake) suddenly felt that, yea verily, this was serious, although they were not all completely sure why. Gawain because he always took at least an hour to wake up properly, Galahad because he was still partly busy licking his bowl clean, and Bors because he was, well, Bors.

However, all had their hearts in the right place, and that, the Author conceded, would have to do. She gathered every reserve of her vast, but within the last ten minutes severely tested patience, and dived into the fray :

"Your commander," she said, "is a victim this time, just as our man here. In fact," and here the Author briefly would have closed her eyes painfully, were it not that raptors don't have eyelids, "In fact, I think it is safe to say that he is the very weapon which have incapacitated our scout."

"The situation is dire," she continued, facing each knight in turn, to let her words sink in. "Someone, quite conveniently, decided to take out your commander, as well as your supplier of intelligence, _at the same time, _and cruelly using, if I might put it so, one to hit the other with."

"Obviously, clever minds are behind this," she surmised. "Clever, and highly diseased minds. There was no warning on the summary of the story. It started off inconspicuously, even in good and fluent style, and then..." here the bird shuddered, as if trying to shut out a disturbing memory, "...then it just...turned...wrong." Hawk's voice shook with held back tears. She hid her head under the left wing and fell into a dread silence, whereunder they could see her breast move under the plumage, the small body desperately trying to contain the fury and trauma within.

The healer within Dagonet cringed in sympathy as he looked at her.

She was right. Something eerie and diseased was wreaking havoc. Hiding in their very midst. And something had to be done about that.

It was this moment that Lancelot chose to turn up. He had, however, made the wise decision of removing, or at least concealing his garters.

He went for a seat at the table, stubbornly pretending that everything was normal, busily underlining this by winking at a tiredlooking Vanora, before surveying the rest of his comrades.

"Where is Arthur?" he asked brightly, and they all looked at him in despair.

This, indeed, was their second in command, their leader in this situation.

Gods help it.

_**TBC.**_


	3. Socrates gets his arse handed to 'im

_**Usual disclaimers apply.**_

_**Finally. A long time in the making. The explanation!**_

* * *

The silence after Lance's entry seemed to stretch on forever. It was like one of those moments which they had occasionally had when sitting around a campfire, all staring into the flames. It would stretch on and on, until someone (usually Bors) would go: "Hmmm?"

And it would turn out no one had said anything.

This was the same. Only somehow longer.

Then suddenly, Hawk fluttered her wings again.

Bors looked down on himself, then back at the bird accusingly.

"You chickenhead!"

And he started dusting off his shoulders, the others waking up to life at this and fervently following his example, especially Gawain who, to his own deep dismay, discovered an impressive veil of cobwebs which seemed to have spread all over his hair and almost meshed with it.

The layer of dust all over was quite thick.

"Awwww _man_," Galahad complained. "The porridge is all cold now."

The rest of them briefly checked their bowls, an action which resulted in general disagreement with Galahad. The remaining contents could hardly be called 'porridge' at this point.

"You!" Bors wasn't finished at all. He wagged a finger threateningly at Hawk. She shuffled sideways a bit, as if to avoid an invisible missile. There was an embarassed look on her bird-face.

"How long has it been, eh? How long? One years? Two. Hell, _fifty _years p'raps? Ye stopped writing yer numptie!"

He looked around on his comrades. "I think we deserve an explanation – eh, lads?"

And he folded his arms expectantly, the others following his example. A forest of expectant looks met the befuddled raptor, who were suddenly acutely aware how tentatively an average size bird's head is detached to the rest of its body, when compared to the strenght of a seasoned warrior's grip.

Then she straightened up, putting on her most aloof tone.

"I believe", she said calmly, "That the true knights of Arthur should be _used_ to a bit of sitting around being asleep by now. Waiting to take back Britain and all that."

The mockery hit a sore spot. Bors cursed and threw his bowl at her, its moldy contents spraying when it hit the girder right below the bird's talons. She momentarily took off, fluttering in the air above it, before settling again, the bowl continuing its journey towards the floor and landing there with a wooden _clonnnnn-g-g-g-g-g-g,_ stretching on for a while as it danced around its axis before coming to a rest. Somewhere from the kitchen area, Vanora groaned. A look of guilt crossed Bors'es features, but didn't settle. Gawain, more in awe of his comrade's wife than said comrade himself, dutifully went and picked up the bowl.

The interlude offered by the description of the bowls journey had bought Hawk some time, but she still looked miserable when Gawain put the piece of eating service down on the table.

She 'fessed up.

"I had a writer's block, okay?"

Bors laughed, a short and disbelieving bark. "You? Ha. That's rich. This is the least serious of your fics. Pull the other one."

She regarded him sharply. "I had written myself into a corner okay?"

The admission didn't buy them off. On the contrary, they seemed even more attentive. Especially Lancelot's interest seemed piqued now, and he regarded the bird critically, a new focus in his demeanor. Tristran, of course, remained out cold.

The Authorbird sighed.

"Okay, I'll let you in on it then. There are several problems with this. Quite complicated. Possibly I am taking this whole writing business way too seriously for something as comparatively inane as a fanfic. But what can I say, I believe in the power of the written word, and the responsibility that follows it.

First off, the slashfics. I just..._dislike_ them, okay? That's what started it all. How_ever_..."

and here the bird sighed and looked directly at Lancelot, "it has turned out surprisingly difficult to dig to the core of the exact cause of this, formulate what annoys me about them, and satirize the theme, without being hoodwinked by countless hegemonic narrative conventions, such as," and here she looked them all over accusingly, "groups of males exercising their manly manliness by being absurdly homophobic and beating up any members of the group who challenge the heteronormative stereotype!"

Bors, who had just dared a sip of his old ale mug, spewed the contents across the table then. Whether it was the effect of the state of the brew, or Hawk's words, seemed less clear.

"But _you _wrote that! Also, what th'ell is up with yer language. What's 'hermionic'? Speak eng..." (Bors caught Dagonet's eye at this)"err, speak _normally_ for cryin' out loud!"

Dagonet cleared his throat. "_Hegemonic_, I believe, means dominating to such an extent as to be kind of invisible to everyone. Taken for granted. Like English," he threw Bors another killing look for good measure, "or the type of plot developments that dictate, for example..." He pondered for a few seconds, "The white guy saves the day for the noble savages and decodes their whole culture to the point of becoming their leader in 3 months, and gets the hot tribal girl in the end despite having been the direct cause of the destruction of her homeland without apologising for this at any point, and she just forgives him cos hey, he is riding the big red dragon. And despite all this, everyone still seems to think it is an awesome story with a profound environmental message and a 'strong female lead'. Cos' they are so used to male narcissistic fantasies as a basic narrative framework, they don't even _see_ that that's what it is. Case in point _Avatar_." he finished.

The Authorhawk groaned at this.

"No. No really, let's _not_ mention Avatar. But thankyou, Dag, that was most helpful."

At this point, Lancelot finally piped up.

"So what's your problem with me, miss _Authorbird_, if I may be so bold?" he glared at Hawk poisonously. "Why can't I wear garters?"

First off," said Hawk dryly, "I don't see the problem in men wearing garters if they so fancy. Men wearing garters is something a lot of people find sexy. Secondly, however... you are my _commentary_ on the hegemonic Lancelot. You're _my_ Lancelot, if you will..."

At this, a few snickers broke out among the boys. They abruptly ceased upon the arrival of Vanora and her tray (including her well planted feet on top of a few sets of toes).

Hawk patiently resumed her explanation:

"The hegemonic Lancelot would probably have said something along the lines of 'why do you write that I wear garters, when everyone knows I am the manliest knight in the whole court and Arthur's right hand man?'"

Lancelot sighed impatiently. "Really though, Miss ladybird, what's the difference between me and him?"

And at this he nodded towards the by now lightly snoring figure of Tristran.

"He shags _Mark's_ wife behind his back, right? And I..."

Silence descended on the room then like a blanket. Lancelot cut his explanation short: "...and that's pretty heteronormative too, isn't it?" he finished, somewhat tamely.

"Indeed," said Hawk. "But then you are all in here forming a mythological court which, at least at a glance, can't really be said to be particularly queer-tolerant can it?" She again somehow managed to shrug, defying her bird-form. "Not much I can do about that. It's who you all are... at a glance. Though, when you get into it and read the romances, you are all so much like a rugby team, and so much in denial about it, it is just too tempting not to poke fun at you. Especially you, Lancelot..." and the bird's eye glinted archly. "and I'm sorry, but a writer just can't pass up that kind of opportunity."

She pointed with her beak towards Tristran's limp form, "He is a completely different kettle of fish. Didn't any of you honestly ever wonder what he did before he hooked up with you guys? Read his cycles. They are about love in all its terror. Love, which is not necessarily approved of by society, but which insists on existing nonetheless, cos that is the damn thing about love isn't it? You can't just base your love and who you are on what is sanctioned by everyone else. Or you could, but it will end in tears for everybody involved – as I am sure Lancelot will tell you." And she locked her pinlike birdeyes to the visage of the First Knight, staring mercilessly.

In the end, it was Lancelot who looked down.

"It doesn't matter," Hawk continued, "that Ysolde is a woman. Putting the loyalty to a woman above the camaraderie of other men is damn well not tolerated, is it? 'Bros before hos', they say, right?

To this day, ignoring the approval of some buddies, or some boss, be he king or not, is still frowned upon, especially if you value above it the opinion of someone who is, say, female, or not white, or queer. Gets your arse ostracized, and make no mistake. But if Ysolde was another man, Tristran would still stick with his love, come what may. Now _that's_ loyalty, loyalty when it's hard to be loyal, in stead of all that 'whatever-will-the-boss-think-of-me' bullshit. Hence," she finished, "I am _Tristran's_ hawk, and not any of you other guys'. And what Guinevere sees in you, Lance, I have no clue. Especially not when you are so clearly getting it on with her husband in all ways but the one way which would actually make me respect you both a bit."

She softened a bit at the sight of Lancelot's face at that. "Of course, when I say 'you', I mean the hegemonic 'you'. The 'you' that you are here in my stories to satirize."

Lancelot's features brightened a bit at that, though his brow was still furrowed in deep thought.

"Someone initially noticed and quite correctly pointed out," Hawk added, "That Arthur isn't here. There is a reason for this. We couldn't even have the discussion if Arthur was here. He's a nice bloke and all, but he's like... you know, _King._ Hegemony in a nutshell. He'd suck the whole focus. I doubt I'd even be able to talk with him around, and no, I'm not going to even_ try_ to elaborate on that one."

Silence resumed for a while, as everyone present tried to digest the many words with quite a lot of syllables, which had come out of the bird's beak the last halfhour. Finally though, Galahad tentatively reached up a hand.

"But, um, l..."

He stalled. The hand momentarily declined. Then the lights seemed to switch on again, and he reached it up fully, index finger gloriously throning at the top."

"Yes?" Hawk nodded at the youngest knight.

"Um..." and he fumbled a bit with the pen and notebook which only now everyone noticed in his hands, scribbling furiously away. He gnawed at the tip of the pen:

"So... how does all this tie into you disliking slash? I mean, that's two guys having it on, isn't it?" and Galahad attempted to look innocent.

Hawk sighed. "Thankyou. Yes. I think that's where we came from, right? Well... seeing as I have so blatantly failed in adhering to the first commandment of the Writer, namely 'show, don't tell', I might as well tell you (and our readers) then:

Slashfics which do not involve characters originally written as gay, are to my mind objectivising homosexuals. It does so by reducing a situation of homosexual activity to a sexual fetish for someone's gaze, little bit the same way that, say, lesbian action is fetishised in mainstream pornography. Only difference and possible forgiving trait is, that most slash is written by females, and subverts the common discourse of the male gaze into an exploration of female desire and its objects, a sorely ignored topic. It still does this, however, at the expense of male homosexuals – it creates a situation in which the men are puppets, objects for the female fantasy, while the female herself (read: a female character to be her point of identification) is not actually involved. It's a show that is put on for her (imaginal) visual pleasure. That is one level of violence – not against the characters as such (I'm sure they will survive), but against male homosexuality. _A lot of homosexual men dislike slashfics._

With very few exceptions, slash violates characters by involving them with each other sexually, without giving an explanation which is appropriately coherent with what and who these characters are. A good example of a coupling which I believe in is, as I have said, Arthur and Lancelot, because there is an actual basis in the characters and their relationship, which could be developed in that direction.

Read 'Mists of Avalon' and I wager you'll agree with me completely.

However, slashfics are rarely about anything at all, besides which two male characters of a given fandom the author finds most hot. The sex between them is then the focus, and even attempts at other plot or a _believable_ exploration of an emotional relationship – not to mention other plotlines in the story – quickly becomes secondary to the fascination of gawping at two guys getting it on with each other. The message is that getting up to hot steamy sex is all homosexual men think of, and it defines their whole identity.

While I have no intention of outlawing the right to entertain sexual fantasies for the authors in question, let me stretch the point even further and posit that,while it is possible to write about sex in a sexy way, as part of a story which is about a lot of other stuff too, _any_ kind of solely 'erotic fiction' is bloody difficult to write, and really make interesting. I have, myself, attempted a piece of va-va-voom with Tristran and some girl called Lydia and in the end, I am dissatisfied with it, even though I tried to turn it into a thematical exploration of sexual trauma and healing.

Let's face it folks – none of us are exactly Erica Jong, are we? And if that's you reading, Erica, come out of the bushes right now and tell us how actually _your narratives too_ are about a lot of other stuff besides the sex - and that's what makes them sexy."

And with that, Hawk seemed finally out of breath.

Beneath her, on the bench, Tristran was finally moving. He opened one eye. Then the other.

"HEY...Hawk?" He crooned, producing a start and something which could have been a gasp from the bird above.

"Yes Tristran?" she breathed girlishly.

"Get a life, will you? Quit the politically correct Socratic dialogue exercises and get out into the sun. You'll turn your brain into mush."

"Right away, Tristran." And she took off, swooping under the ceiling and out the window, leaving behind the rest of the company, Galahad still furiously scribbling, Vanora wiping off the table with Dagonet lending the occasional helping hand with the chairs.

Tristran stretched himself. Then he got up, shrugged his shoulders backwards for a moment, and looked around at his gawping mates. A spider was easing itself down on its thread above the head of Bors, hanging there, unnoticed by the big man below.

**FIN.**


End file.
